Well, that old saying, "Kids are smarter than you think", is one that I agree with.

With all that's going on in her young life, DD is asking a lot of questions about rules.

Unlucky for her, her mother (me, lol) grew up with a very strict father and a fairly loosy-goosy mother who tried to take the edge off the strictness, but ended up stifling herself to do it.

I think they are good questions about life and I don't always have an answer, but wonder if anyone else comes across this type of thing?

It varies in simplicity to difficulty, sometimes is school rules..."Mom, so and so wore flip fops again and the rule is no flip flops and they didn't get in trouble!!!" and then I know it's a reignited battle for open toed shoes at school. Then I know it's coming, the "Why do I have to do the rules and not them?

Or toys at school. We went through a whole year of finding toys snuck to school and it caused grief at home between parents and DD and got the same question: "Why do I have to follow rules?

What I finally found to tell her is that she and I work to follow rules so that we can be happy with ourselves. We did what we were supposed to and can go on living with that knowledge. We did nothing sneaky, attempted to get away with nothing and treated everyone as well as we could.

But yes, especially in light of STBXHs A and activities, why do we have to follow rules while others opt out? Why do we follow rules and get the snots of life kicked out of us anyway?

I try to tell her not to worry about what other people are doing or thinking and we should work on ourselves being good people, but when she continually sees people get away with it, how to keep convincing her and hope she will do what's right?

I find myself giving her a little more room to see what she does somtimes...tiny bit longer apron strings. She's not a kid who believes words, she has to get a burn to believe it's hot or fall off a swing to not do that again...do you know what I mean? I guess I just want the best for her with the least amount of hard times she can have, and all I can do is all I can do...it will be her turn someday to take my lessons with her and make her choices.